Tinkerers’ workshop: slow furniture recrafted from trash

Enough crafters are using trash to make furniture that Pablo Fernández opened a store devoted to selling just that. “You can feel there is kind of a movement of working with recycled things or old objects. It’s maybe because of our times. If you’re in a desert you work with what surrounds you. Right now we are overloaded with tons of materials, it’s just a reality.”

It’s part store, part workship and the store’s name- ReBorn Recraft Atelier– is a nod to the Barcelona neighborhood in which it’s based- “El Born”- and the type of slow atelier-style craftsmanship that accompanies recrafted furniture.

His group of designers tinker with materials until they are born again as something entirely new.

The store features lights made from showerheads, bicycle spokes, bottles and carpet liners; pallets remade into chairs, tables, lamps and wine holders and Fernández’s own line of discarded wooden drawers and single-paned windows repurposed as shelving and cabinetry.